A Wenger Wingerless Wilderness

What changed in Wenger’s playing philosophy that meant he gave up on having a proper winger? Was it the lack of progress of Theo or the arrival of Sanchez?

Or could it have been the enormous success of TH14’s conversion?

Whatever it is the entertainment factor is lessened by a lack of a tricky winger, and this lack has had a knock-on effect upon our defensive quality. The demands placed upon both Bellerin and Monreal are enormous and impossible to achieve. Of course teams are going to get in crosses and have open spaces on our flanks when our FB/WB’s are the thrust of our wingplay.

It has to be admitted I know SFA about tactics but in my opinion it just doesn’t work for us.

Answer: Buy Zaha

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 18th, 2018 at 10:21 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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I always think of a winger as a luxury position.
If the class idiot forgot his boots, only had plimsolls to play in and the pitch was muddy, the least damage he could do was stuck out on the wing. Same applies to rugby.

In my book, a proper winger is an assister from the flanks who chips in with the odd goal.
Out of those you list, I reckon SuperSwede is the only true winger, even Overmars rarely crossed the ball.
Brian Marwood was another whose main attribute was providing crosses for the big man in the middle, but he was pre-Wenger of course.

Thierry’s conversion may be a big factor in AW’s rejection of the position, as you say, though I’d imagine that Herbert Chapman would say that he converted Cliff Bastin from winger into prolific goalscorer slightly earlier. 🙂

Having said that, I do like the idea of Zaha. Palace always seem to score against us as a result of his wing play.

Twitter is talking about the spuds trying to cheat their way past Rochdale.
Lineker, Shearer etc thought this was a clear foul. Most fans would say it was a dive, a small proportion say there was ‘contact’ so it’s a pen.
It seems crazy to me when nobody can even agree what a foul or dive actually is.

Morning all and good post Raddy. I don’t think you see too many traditional wingers at the highest level anymore and think they are more wing forward types or inside forwards.

It is good if these players can vary their play knowing when to cut in and become a goal threat and when to receive wide to stretch the opposition and create space and opportunities for others. The best ones give you both. Robben was a great example of this for me. I personally would like to see a bit more of this variability in our play.

We don’t seem to employ forward players that stay wide that often and tend to get our width mainly from FB’s operating like wingers. I do think it makes us a bit predictable and is likely one of our longer standing problems in not being able to vary our play enough.

I think it is as much a coaching and tactical factor with us, and don’t think we will necessarily improve in this area (if we do need to) by just buying a player. Chances are they will just end up coming inside too much and clogging up the space further. I don’t see Malcolm or Lemar as giving us that option really either, and Lemar in particular looks like he prefers taking up positions some way in from the touchline than traditional wing positions.

Zaha looks more a natural wide player that can cut in so could be an option, (as long as this natural game isn’t coached out of him with us), but why not try Reiss Nelson out at wide left? Even AMN looked to have ability in that position, but I must admit to still hoping he will become our holding midfield answer.

Welbeck and Nelson look to be our most natural options to give us width at present but there may be a couple of others that could be knocking on the first team door in the youth ranks as well. I definitely think I would sacrifice 2 of our CM’s to accommodate another player like this, but I definitely think AW will not because he does love the CM players.